HBO Breach Exposes 1.5 Terabytes of Data By John Burcham

What happened?

Premium television network HBO suffered a massive data breach that reportedly exposed 1.5 terabytes of data. The HBO breach was discovered on July 27, 2017 after a hacker group — calling themselves “little.finger66” — breached the company’s internal network with a sophisticated cyberattack.

Scope of Breach

Three days after the breach was initially discovered, HBO employees were warned not to open suspicious emails. Additionally, unaired scripts from Game of Thrones and episodes from two other HBO shows were leaked online.

A week later, the group released internal emails and personal data of an HBO executive. Along with company data, some Game of Thrones marketing files were also dumped online.

Security experts found “thousands of internal documents” online after examining Google’s search results for the stolen data. The ongoing investigation has only confirmed that a portion of the stolen data has been leaked on the Internet. But, the compromised files could range from unaired materials (like scripts and episodes) to financial documents, personal information other highly sensitive business documents.

HBO also declined to comment about the ransom demand made by the hacker group. However, the group has said they will continue leaking HBO files if the ransom is not met.

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